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Pratt Hosts Vietnamese Fulbright Scholar Ly Hi Pham Pratt hosted Fulbright Visiting Scholar Dr. Ly Thi Pham for the 2008-2009 academic year. During her tenure, Pham, who directs the Center for International Education Culture Exchange and Research in Ho Chi Mihn City, Vietnam, researched how to introduce the best international education administration practices into Vietnamese higher education. She also published two papers, “Reconsideration for Academic Freedom in Vietnam” and “Innovation of University Structure—Questions for Vietnam.” The latter she presented at the 53rd Conference on Comparative Education in South Carolina in March 2009. Pham was one of approximately 850 outstanding foreign faculty and professionals who were selected to teach and do research in the United States through the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program this year.
Class Plans Net-Zero Carbon District in Brooklyn Professors Meta Brunzema and Viren Brahmbhatt co-taught the interdisciplinary graduate design studio Fundamentals of Urban Design, a course that proposes design and planning strategies for net-zero carbon development, in the fall. The aim was to plan for a model district in Central Brooklyn—an area that includes BedfordStuyvesant and Pratt’s Brooklyn campus. Students studied design strategies with a focus on reducing the carbon footprint of the area, in the process, re-envisioning the public infrastructure—streets, plazas, parks, and public spaces and analyzing the existing housing and building stock, the primary producers of carbon emissions. The class partnered with Tony Gelber, Pratt’s director of administrative sustainability, and with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the Pratt Center for Community Development to address global, national, and local issues such as climate change, dependence on fossil fuels, carbon output from New York City buildings, and the need to create “green-collar” jobs in the city. A faculty development grant from the Center for Sustainable Design Studies and Research (CSDS) supported the development of the course.
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faculty notes Internationally renowned video and installation artist Perry Bard, adjunct associate professor, Foundation arts and film/ video and photography, is heading an ambitious global project to remake the Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov’s 1929 classic film, Man with a Movie Camera. Her project reinterprets Vertov’s original film by inviting the public to
The award is in recognition of the Pratt Center’s advocacy work in the area of transportation equity. Byron worked with planners and community leaders to propose 11 bus rapid transit routes that maximize connections between underserved, low-income riders and major centers of employment and education in New York City.
At right, a still from Perry Bard’s remake of the seminal film Man with a Movie Camera, shown left upload their footage re-creating Vertov’s script scene by scene to her website (http://dziga. perrybard.net). Several of Pratt’s architecture faculty members were among the winners and finalists in the City Racks Design Competition, presented by the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in the fall. Frank Bitonti, principal in the firm FADarch and visiting instructor, graduate architecture, was named a finalist in the sidewalk rack component. Undergraduate architecture professors Brian Ripel and George Showman, respectively principal and associate of the firm RSVP Architecture Studio, were awarded one of two first prizes for the “inbuilding” component of the competition. Rick Block, visiting associate professor, information and library science, received the 2008 LJ Teaching Award, which recognizes excellence in educating the next generation of librarians. This annual award, sponsored by the information search company ProQuest, confers a $5,000 prize. Block was profiled in the November 15 Library Journal article, titled “An Adjunct Who Takes Education of LIS Students Far Beyond the Classroom.” Pratt Center’s Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative director Joan Byron will accept the Award for Civic Leadership from The Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management of the New York University Wagner School of Public Policy this spring.
Pratt’s Academic Director of Sustainability, Debera Johnson, B.I.D. ’86, was recently named strategic director of Educational Institute Adopters at Designers Accord, a global coalition of more than 100,000 designers, educators, researchers, engineers, and corporate leaders who work together to create positive environmental and social impact. Educational Institute Adopters initiate dialogue about environmental and social impact and sustainable alternatives with students and colleagues in their programs, rework curricula and assignments to emphasize environmentally and socially responsible design and work processes, and provide course content, lectures, and assignments that focus on strategic and material alternatives for sustainable design. Johnson will guide the strategy for educational institutions’ adoption of the accord and will host the “Educational Adopters Summit” in New York City in April 2009. Pratt Institute has been an Educational Institute Adopter of Designers Accord since 2008. Media arts professor and Pratt alumnus Andy London, B.F.A. ’90, has won a prestigious CINE Golden Eagle Award for his independent short film A Letter To Colleen, which premiered at the 2007 Hamptons International Film Festival and is up for consideration for a 2009 Academy Award nomination in short animation. The film is based on themes related to high school suburban life—love, obsession, and the loss of innocence.